


testamentary

by morthael



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Character Study, Featuring Shiro's lack of concern about death, Found Family, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Introspection, Platonic Sheith, Pre-Canon, Pre-Kerberos Mission, kind of, minor hurt/comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:35:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26595343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morthael/pseuds/morthael
Summary: “This?” Shiro says. “Ah, nothing important. Just a draft. I’m writing my will.”“What?” Keith hears himself say.“My will,” Shiro says patiently. “Every pilot needs one before they can fly.” He points to himself, smiling. “And this pilot, especially, since he’ll be going further than anyone’s ever been before.”Shiro is writing a will. Keith hates the finality of it all.
Relationships: Keith & Shiro (Voltron), Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 90





	testamentary

**Author's Note:**

> this idea came to me while I was trying to sleep and has been living rent-free in my brain for the last 1.5 days

Keith watches Shiro with a constant intensity.

Like a flame helplessly burning on a wick, he sees things, facets of Shiro's candle that are lost to others who have never known to look deeper.

It had started as a habit nurtured by rough years of distrust; a learned defence that urged him to pry deeper, peel back the mask and figure out the game.

As time went on, Keith realised there was no guile – only open, pure honesty, the kind that aches in his bones and makes him tremble with aborted yearning.

Keith knows Shiro sees him watching; like all other aspects of himself, he is not subtle. He catches himself sometimes, gazing up at Shiro through his eyelashes, chewing on the end of his stylus, the latest homework forgotten beneath his fingertips. (At times like these, Shiro doesn’t comment, but gently pries the mangled stylus from between his teeth. “That isn’t good for either you or the pen,” he would say.)

Keith _knows_ Shiro.

It’s why he knows that something is wrong; something’s changed, the moment he enters Shiro’s room.

Shiro is sitting at his desk. His head is canted studiously over a sheaf of papers, and his fingers are poised in an elegant grip – but unmoving.

Keith knows, from careful observation, that Shiro is a traditionalist. Formal letters, important documents – whatever it is, he drafts it first in careful, precise handwriting, before committing it digitally.

“What are you doing?” Keith says. Blunt, but not careless. Mindless words feel like ash in his mouth.

Shiro stirs. He doesn’t hide the papers. Doesn’t move to conceal them. Treats Keith without derision, like an adult, someone who can be trusted. He likes that about Shiro.

“Hey, Keith.” Unlike Keith, small talk feels natural coming from Shiro. He smiles at Keith, who squirms and translates the action into fiddling with his uniform sleeves.

“This?” Shiro says. “Ah, nothing important. Just a draft. I’m writing my will.”

Keith's breath stutters. His limbs suddenly feel too heavy, so he sits in the stool next to Shiro’s. (The stool had been appropriated from the mess hall when weekly study nights turned into weekly study nights at Shiro’s).

“What?” Keith hears himself say.

Shiro misunderstands him.

“My will,” Shiro says patiently. “Every pilot needs one before they can fly.” He points to himself, smiling. “And this pilot, especially, since he’ll be going further than anyone’s ever been before.”

Keith can’t help the way fire burns all the way down his throat. “But you’ve already been out into space,” he says. Twists on his seat, so that his knees are almost touching Shiro’s. But they don’t touch. He never initiates. “You already have one. Don’t you?”

Shiro shakes his head with a rueful smile. “I need an up to date one,” he says. He reaches out, ruffles Keith’s hair. “Come on. Don’t look like that, Keith. No one likes thinking about it, but it has to be done.”

Keith furrows his brows. “Jus’ seems so final,” he mutters. He doesn’t fight when Shiro draws him in.

Pressed against Shiro’s broad chest, he doesn’t mean to look, but the paper is right there, and he sees neat handwriting, and the word _Adam,_ neatly scratched out.

*

Shiro is still working on the will two days later. He’s lying in his bed, face up, two hands holding up the piece of paper at arm’s length like it’s a rattlesnake in the desert, waiting for a bite. Keith is perched at the table, head pillowed in his arms. He’s meant to be finishing an assignment for Professor Montgomery, but instead, he turns his face to the side, opting to watch Shiro instead.

Minutes pass, yet Shiro doesn’t move. Keith scowls, pushing himself upright. This sucks. He wants Shiro to be done already, for things to go back to normal. Two weeks out from the launch date – they only have so much time left.

“What’s taking so long?” Keith complains, and he has to rein in the whine creeping into his voice. Adults don’t _whine_.

Shiro groans, dropping the paper onto his chest. “I spoke to the Garrison Legal Office,” he says. “Did you know they have a new guy now? And the new guy wasn’t satisfied with what I drafted. He told me I need to think _more broadly_. Whatever that means.”

Shiro sits up, rolling his neck. “Still,” he mumbles. “I should be thanking him. I’ll need it to be perfect, after all, after Kerberos.”

Keith stills. Ever since that day he learned of Shiro’s condition, Shiro hasn’t been afraid to speak with perfect, bleak honesty, and Keith hates it as much as he loves Shiro’s candidness. His hands curl into white-knuckled fists.

“What’s that supposed to mean,” he mutters lowly, and Shiro _looks_ at him.

“Well,” Shiro says slowly. “The doctors don’t know how I’ll be in a few years. What if, by then, I can’t write? Can’t talk? I’ve got to get it all out while I can.” he grins, suddenly. “Hey, do you think wills can be conditional? Like, ‘if Keith beats my sim score by more than ninety-nine points, then I’ll – ?” 

“Cut it out!” Keith says heatedly. “Nothing’s going to happen to you, Shiro, and that’s not something to joke about!” He doesn’t know when it happened, but he’s standing now, fists clenched and body rigid.

Shiro sobers. “I know,” he says, quietly. “Just trying to lighten the mood.” Keith keeps staring at him though, wounded, and Shiro sighs.

“It’s fine, Keith,” he says. “I just…I just need this will to be valid. So that if, on the off chance, anything does happen, at least I won’t die intestate.”

Keith’s body physically curls in revulsion at even entertaining the _thought_ of Shiro dying…he fights bile down. “Intestate?”

“’S’what happens when someone dies without a will. Or a valid one, I guess.” Shiro runs a hand through his hair. “It means the government ends up distributing all your assets. There’s a formula for how everything gets divided up. The officer told me things can get pretty tricky. It’s complicated.”

Keith shrugs. His dad had never had a will, and Keith had turned out fine – though his bank accounts are locked away still, for safekeeping until he’s older.

“So, it’d just go to your family, right?” Keith tries for casual. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

Shiro’s expression clouds over, and he doesn’t speak for a minute. Keith doesn’t know how to break the silence – he doesn’t know what he’s said wrong.

“They won’t get anything from me,” Shiro says finally.

*

They’re in the desert, watching the sun paint the canyon and cliffs and dust with dying blooms of red and orange.

“I need a witness,” Shiro says, looking strangely hesitant. Keith starts. It wasn’t what he had been expecting to hear, but if Shiro needs someone to witness his will, then that means –

“You’re almost done,” Keith breathes out, because honestly, it will be a relief if Shiro can just let this go and just stop _thinking_ about it and –

“I was going to ask you,” Shiro says, smiling down at him, and Keith’s heart does a funny lurch to the side, pleased and dismayed all at once.

“But you can’t.” Shiro laughs. “Even if you wanted to. Sorry, I shouldn’t have even mentioned it. I know this whole thing is bugging you.”

Keith scrunches his nose. He knows the reason. “’Cause I’m not eighteen yet.”

“Yeah.” Shiro looks beyond them, at some faraway point into the sky. “I thought…I just wanted you to know. That I was thinking of you. That’s all.”

*

A week out, and there’s some kind of Garrison party to celebrate the launch. Shiro is there, and so is Matt Holt and many other officers that Keith can barely put a name to. Alcohol is banned in the Garrison, but the upper brass have a way of turning their heads when it suits them, so.

Keith’s in the corner of the room, and his orange cadet’s uniform has marked him to be steered clear of by the officers handing out bottles of beer like free candy. His eyes are on Shiro, who downs drinks freely with every successive toast, happily mingling with his crowd of well-wishers and fellow revellers.

As the night goes on, Keith wishes he was somewhere else – but Shiro had asked him to come, and only seven days left separate them from a year of nothingness, so – so Keith tries, mind whirling and blanking with names that he immediately forgets, unmemorable faces eclipsed by the burning star that is Shiro, taking up centre stage, rear, left, and right in Keith’s mind.

Shiro stumbles into him, and Keith catches his weight, barely. It seems he’s finally met everyone at the party at least once, and now the music is starting for real, blaring an ear-shattering, thumping bass as people cheer and dance and move.

“Hey,” Shiro says weakly, clinging onto his shoulder, and Keith pushes at him, rolling his eyes.

“You’re drunk, Shiro,” he tells him, exasperatedly. He’s never seen Shiro even tipsy before, but somehow, he’s exactly the sort of drunk Keith had imagined.

“’M’tired,” Shiro says, putting his arms around him, and Keith immediately senses that if he doesn’t do something, they’re both going to end up smothered on the ground. Or, or – he thinks, as Shiro’s arms tighten around him – he’s going to be lifted in the air like a ragdoll.

“Okay, okay,” he says, stifling a laugh, and shoves Shiro back, so that only one heavy arm is draped around his shoulders. “Want to go back to your room?”

“Mmmm.”

Somehow, they make it to Shiro’s quarters, Keith stumbling and half carrying Shiro with sheer stubborn force of will. His arms are shaking with fatigue as he heaves Shiro onto his own bed; he doesn’t catch Shiro’s arm hooking around his neck, and his leg kicking out in a textbook sweep, bringing him tumbling down.

“Ugh,” Keith groans, tangled and confused. He can feel Shiro’s chest expanding, breathing steadily, smells cheap beer and the remnants of Shiro’s cologne, worn in. He half-heartedly tries to tug himself free. “Come _on_ , Shiro.” 

Shiro takes a deep breath.

“Come to the launch with me,” he says.

Keith freezes. His brain blanks out for a second, then kickstarts itself.

“ _No_ ,” he says decisively, and manages to tug Shiro’s arm off his shoulder. He sits up, ruffled, and Shiro blinks blearily up at him, his forelock loose and spilling across his brow into his eyes. “Stop it, Shiro,” Keith says wearily, “you’re drunk. Only family get to go to the launch.”

Shiro scowls, but the expression makes him look oddly childish. Keith almost expects a pout.

“Told you already,” Shiro mumbles, “No family. ‘Least, none that’d willingly come.”

Keith has never really heard Shiro discuss his family before; he feels a thrill of guilt as he leans in closer, and says, “What happened?”

He’s staring at Shiro unguardedly – Shiro’s defences are down and he’s miles away, gaze unfocused on the wall.

“My parents,” Shiro grunts, “They’re all I have. And I was all they had.”

He rolls over very slowly to face Keith. His hand rests on the bed, inches from Keith’s knee. “They didn’t want me to come to the Galaxy Garrison. Said I should stay in Japan. Get a steady job. Maybe as an accountant or a doctor,” He laughs, hollowly. “I could never do that.”

Keith swallows. “That doesn’t sound like you,” he says softly.

“Then we discovered my condition. That the chances were that I’d never live past my thirties.” Shiro closes his eyes, his hand clenching. “D’you know that the younger generation is expected to take care of the older generation in their old age? I spent years trying to live up to their expectations, and in the end there couldn’t be anything but disappointment.”

He shouldn’t have pried, but the bitterness lacing Shiro’s words is like a balm to him; his heart sings that he is trusted, Shiro trusts him to know his secrets, his fears, his worries.

Keith tentatively reaches out to touch Shiro’s hand. “If it’s worth anything at all, you could never disappoint me,” he whispers, and Shiro’s eyes open, pinning him with sudden intensity.

“You’re the closest thing to family to me,” Shiro says. “So come to the launch.” His palm opens, fingers encircling Keith’s wrist.

Keith’s heart makes a valiant and pathetic attempt to leap out of his throat. He’s weak, weak, but he can’t, could never refuse Shiro, so –

“Alright,” Keith says, and Shiro’s smile is so bright he feels his cheeks heat with its warmth.

*

“You’ll come, right?” Shiro says the next day, unsteadily, hungover and dehydrated but _sober_.

Somehow, Shiro knows exactly the right combination of words to baffle him.

“You were drunk,” he answers carefully instead, because he’s impatient and reckless and all of those things other people say, but he can’t ruin this one thing he does have.

Shiro rolls his eyes. The effort makes him wince and sag against the wall, and Keith starts forward, concerned, but Shiro shrugs him off.

“Yeah, and I meant every word I said,” Shiro says. “You’re like family to me.” A weak grin lights up his face. “Shit, Keith, I’m a truthful drunk. Who would’ve thought? Now you know. You can’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t,” Keith promises. “And I’ll come. If you want me to.”

*

Launch date.

Keith isn’t around as the Garrison suits up its three heroes, final checks and double checks and briefings and pep talks from senior officers.

He does see Shiro when they enter the car together. The drive to the site is something Keith will probably never forget; trapped up close in the back seat of the off roader, Shiro’s face is alight with wonder and elatedness, with just a frizz of nervous energy buzzing underneath his skin.

At the site, there’s a short speech by the Admiral as engineers make their final preparations, but Keith is watching Shiro. He can’t help it; pulled by a constant string, he gravitates towards his sun. He misses everything Sanda says.

Then comes goodbye.

Keith searches every corner of Shiro’s face, committing dark hair and tanned skin and laughter lines to the reaches of his memory. He must look so young and pathetic; he schools his face, tries to calm his raw, cracked voice.

Nothing comes out. He grits his teeth, furious, that Shiro’s leaving and he doesn’t have – anything – that he can say, to encourage Shiro or calm him down or –

Shiro’s hand is on his shoulder, he can feel the warmth of his palm seeping in through his uniform. “Hey,” Shiro says, smiling, “Don’t get too trapped in there, alright?” And then warm arms are coming up around him, holding him tight, like Keith’s the one who’s flying into the great unknown with the weight of humanity’s expectations on his shoulders.

He curls his fingers in the dark grey of Shiro’s uniform, allows the embrace for another moment, or two, then pushes Shiro gently back. Doesn’t take what he needs to let go.

“Go on,” Keith says, smiling, and with one last look, Shiro is gone, out of sight.

*

The day after the news of the Kerberos mission is announced, Keith guns through the simulation, breaking through Shiro’s record by a solid hundred points. He should feel elated, but he feels numb instead; he’s a naked flame without a grounding wick. When he tears out of the flight simulator, he’s white as a sheet and no one will meet his eyes.

He’s called to Iverson’s office.

There hasn’t been a single time he’s been here that didn’t mean bad things.

So, when he slinks through the door and sees a familiar sheet of paper clasped in Iverson’s hand – and another officer, a tall, thin man sitting inside – he stops.

And then Keith laughs. He laughs, and he laughs.

The giggles escape from him uncontrollably. He must look like some wild thing, arms clutching around his stomach and gasping and wheezing hysterically.

Iverson looks disturbed, and when people are disturbed by Keith, it always, inevitably turns into anger: “Have some decorum, cadet!” he snaps, and Keith struggles to regain himself, breath shuddering raggedly through his lungs.

“I thought it was a joke,” Keith gasps, pulling himself to attention. “I thought – I thought – ”

“Quiet,” Iverson hisses, “You have no idea how unprecedented this. Here – you – ” he thrusts the paper at the other man in the room. “ _You_ talk to him.”

Iverson leaves.

The other man turns to him. “I’m from the Legal Office,” he offers. “Shiro asked me to be the executor of his will.”

“I don’t care.”

The man frowns. “You should,” he says. “I’ve been granted probate, which means I can now administer and distribute the estate. _You_ have been named as the primary beneficiary of the estate. That is why it is important that you’re here.”

“I don’t – I don’t care,” Keith says.

The man looks sorry.

“There’s more,” he says. “You…Shiro arranged for his Survivor’s Pension to be paid to you in the case of his death.”

Keith is numb. “Shiro’s not dead,” he whispers, and he runs from the office.

*

Eventually, he runs from the Garrison, too – and it’s not stealing, he thinks, if the hoverbike belongs to him now. He takes what little he can fit on the bike, wraps himself in Shiro’s jacket – then takes off.

Sundown is a cold reminder that time runs out, a burning wick that finally meets the wax.

*

*

*

But where there is sunset, there is also sunrise.

Keith sees it in the form of a falling star; a fallen ship.

When he _sees_ Shiro for the first time in a year, it’s all he can do to keep moving, keep running, keep flying. He wants to look back as he skims dusty cliffs in the hoverbike. He wants to hold him, touch him, feel that he’s real.

He stands guard over Shiro during the night, tangling his fingers around Shiro’s palm, his wrist. He watches over him, mapping out the year’s changes – new scars, new hair, new arm, new…the way Shiro furrows his brow in his sleep, angles his body so that it’s curled protectively inwards.

Keith moves closer, no longer loose and rattling and lost, but trapped in Shiro’s orbit once more. He draws closer again.

He never initiates.

But he does now.

He skates a tentative palm up the broad side of Shiro’s back. “Why did you do it?” Keith whispers to himself, but Shiro wakes anyway, sleep sloughing off him in waves. He presses back against Keith’s palm.

“How many times am I going to have to tell you?” Shiro murmurs. He rolls over, languid and loose-limbed, and no matter what changes he goes through, there’s nothing foreign about the open honesty in Shiro’s eyes. “You’re family.”

And Keith doesn’t take what he needs to let go, but he’s never letting go of Shiro again; he collapses into him, draws his arms tight – and when Shiro tugs him in too, when he hears Shiro’s pulse thudding steady against his ear –

Keith starts to feel the raw ache in his chest finally, finally settle.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](https://morthael.tumblr.com/) / [twitter](https://twitter.com/anuveon)


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